Over the last few decades, the humanities have seen rapidly growing interest in digital and data-driven methodologies. Increasingly, job listings and grants seek out research that engages them, a demand that has had the effect of marketing the ‘digital humanities’ less as a critical methodology and interdisciplinary tool and more as a trendy buzz word. What are the digital humanities and what does it mean to treat them not as accessories to our work but rather really integrate them into one’s scholarly approach? How do we turn material into data, create accessible archives, and develop digital tools and visualizations? Our reading group sets out to demystify these questions and to discuss ways in which a data-driven approach can bolster our research in humanities fields as well as make our work more collaborative across fields. Though our group will undoubtedly discuss these tools as practical apparatuses, as a reading group our focus will be more theoretical: how are scholars and practitioners of a variety of backgrounds positioning the discussion, what tools are used and for what reason, and what is the role of specialization and discipline formation in an embrace of technology as a tool for humanistic discovery?

Fall Schedule:

• September 18, 2024: State of the Field & Interdisciplinary Collaboration
• October 23, 2024: Archiving Raw Data & Database Development 
• November 13, 2024: Visualizing Data 
• December 11, 2024: AI & Machine Learning